Windows XP

At some point, speculating about what will become quickly obvious is difficult. Still, on the cusp as we are of the release of the first preview of what may be called Windows 9, it’s reasonable to take a few notes of the latest rumor cycle: Will Windows 9 be free?
Current gossip indicates that for Windows 8 and Windows XP users, the new code could be in the case of the former, free, and… Read More

According to Net Applications, Windows XP’s global desktop market share fell from 24.82 percent in July, to 23.89 percent in August. That’s just under one percentage point in a full month. At that pace, it will take more than two years for Windows XP’s market share to fully dissipate. Read More

Microsoft was just socked with another blow in China. The Central Government Procurement Center has banned the use of Windows 8 on government computers. Reuters reports that computer security relating to Windows XP was cited as the reason. Read More

According to security firm Qualys, Windows XP’s market share among enterprise-level corporations has slipped under the 10 percent mark, falling from 10 percent in April to “close to” 8 percent in May. Read More

Massive worries about security? Check. Officially past its support date? Yep. More than a decade old in an industry that values youth not as a virtue, but as a weapon? Certainly. But akin to the diminutive animal, Windows XP doesn’t care.
The most recent data is plain: Windows XP retains market share of the PC market north 26%, globally. It shed less than 2% share in the past month. Read More

If you are reading this in Internet Explorer, you should probably close it and fire up Chrome — and come back after a newly reported zero-day flaw is patched. Even the U.S. and U.K. governments are warning against use of Internet Explorer for now. The zero-day flaw has been uncovered in Internet Explorer versions 6,7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, according to Microsoft. Those browser versions… Read More

Market share numbers for February are out, and it looks like XP is set to die standing up with nearly a third of the global OS market in its grip. NetMarketShare numbers for the second month of the year indicate that Windows XP controls 29.53 percent of the desktop operating system install base. Read More

Microsoft is finally ending all extended support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014, five years after it ended mainstream support. After that, the 12-year-old operating system will not receive any new security updates and its users will be left to fend for themselves. As Google announced today, however, it will provide support for Chrome users on XP until at least a year after Microsoft’s… Read More

If you are still using Windows XP – or you know somebody who does – Microsoft would like you to remember that you only have 365 more days before the company will end all support for the operating system it launched in New York on October 25, 2001. Both Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 will go out of support on April 8, 2014, and XP users will stop receiving any new security… Read More

Latest Crunch Report

Windows, Microsoft’s ubiquitous operating system, sits firmly in place.
One year after launch, licenses for the successor of Windows Vista, Windows 7, have gone over the counter no less than 240 million times.
As Microsoft points out, that makes it the fastest selling operating system in history, which is not super surprising when you consider how many were clamoring to upgrade from… Read More

Usage of Windows 7 had finally passed that of Windows Vista, according to data from Net Applications. As it stands, 14.46 percent of Internet users are using Windows 7, compared to 14.34 percent for Windows Vista. The king remains Windows XP, which stands at a remarkable 61.9 percent—remarkable because XP is nearly 9 years old. Read More

Microsoft makes it so hard to like Windows. The company released an update on Tuesday that seems to have borked a number of Windows XP installations. There’s a number of message board threads wherein people are complaining that, since the update, their computers boot right to a blue screen of death. Sigh. Read More

Somebody should tell Doug “netbook” Aamoth that Windows 7 seems to be a battery hog. The fine folks at Laptop magazine have put three different netbooks to the test, determining their respective battery life under both Windows XP and Windows 7. Looks like Windows XP is the winner. Read More

Oh, netbooks. Doug loves ’em, but I’m still not convinced of their vitalness. Is it neat to see a tiny little computer zip around the Internet? Sure, yeah. Can I go about my business without ever having owned one? So far, so good! I bring this up because yesterday I was able to goof around—in truth, that’s probably the most accurate phrase to describe it, no matter… Read More

There is a good amount of quiet hesitation about the xpPhone around the interwebs this morning. It seems that everyone wants to believe that the xpPhone will make it to market, but it almost seems to good to be true. The specs list an unspecified AMD Super Mobile CPU powering the system and it will be configurable with a wide range of SSD and HDD options. But best of all, the company lets… Read More

Truth be told, I’d be more inclined to buy one of those old people cellphones than something like this (or the iPhone for that matter!) The ITG xpPhone, which will debut at Computex, is, yes, a cellphone that, yes, runs Windows XP. Yes. As a Mac user, the only reason I’d boot into Windows XP is to fire up uTorrent, or play Team Fortress 2, neither of which I see running too well on… Read More

Good to see that, sometimes, even the biggest tech companies can come to their senses. Today Sony in Japan announced a new Vaio P model, the Vaio P50 [JP], which comes with Windows XP SP3 instead of the hopelessly wrong Vista Sony shipped their Ps with so far. Read More

So there’s going to be an XP mode in Windows 7. What does that mean? For users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate – sorry, lower-end users! – you will get a full copy of Windows XP that will run under a virtual processor. However, instead of creating a new desktop environment, the XP mode will bring the application up as a window inside Windows 7. This means… Read More

Great news, everyone stuck in 2001! Microsoft will allow users to downgrade from Windows 7 to Windows XP! So if you’re super happy with the stability and performance of Windows XP, and don’t give a damn about any of the new features or enhancements included in Microsoft’s latest offering, you can safely bury your head back in the sand! Read More